Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452

'Yes, I do—a little.'

'Only a little?'

'Well, perhaps I may say I know her pretty well. Indeed, to confess the truth, I'm rather intimate with her.'

'That is extremely fortunate,' returned Major Elliott.

'Then you don't deny the engagement?' said Frances.

'Colonel Seymour, who was my father's friend and mine, very kindly expressed a wish, before he died, that, provided there was no objection on either side, his daughter and I should be married; but you see, my dearest Fanny, as there happens to be an objection on both sides, the scheme, however well meant, is defeated.'

'On both sides!' reiterated Frances with surprise.

'Yes; on both sides,' answered he smiling.

'But how do you know that, when you've never seen Miss Seymour—at least I thought you never had?'

'Neither have I; but I happen to know that she has not the slightest intention of taking me for her husband.'

'Oh,' said Frances, laughing at the recollection of her own violent antipathy to this irresistible man, who, after all, had taken her heart by storm—'I suppose you have somehow heard that she disliked the idea of being trammelled by an engagement to a person she never saw, and whom she had made up her mind she could not love; but remember, Henry, she has never seen you. How do you know that she might not have fallen in love with you at first sight?—as somebody else did,' she added playfully.

'Because, my dear little girl, she happens to be in love already. She did not wait to see me, but wisely gave away her heart when she met a man that pleased her.'

'But you're mistaken,' answered Frances, beginning to feel alarmed; 'you are indeed! I know Frances Seymour has no attachment. I know that till she saw you—I mean that—I am certain she has no attachment, nor ever had any.'

'Perhaps you are not altogether in her confidence.'

'O yes, I am indeed.'

Major Elliott shook his head, and smiled significantly. 'Rely on it,' he said, 'that what I tell you is the fact; but you have probably not seen Miss Seymour very lately, which would sufficiently account for your ignorance of her secret. I am told that she is extremely handsome and charming, and that she sings divinely.'

Five minutes earlier, Frances would have been delighted with this testimony to her attractions; and would have been ready with a repartee about the loss he would sustain in relinquishing so many perfections for her sake; but now her heart was growing faint with terror, and her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth. Thoughts that would fill pages darted through her brain like lightning—dreadful possibilities, that she had never foreseen nor thought of.

Vincent Dunbar's regiment had been in India; she knew it was one of the seventies; but she had either never heard the exact number, or she had not sufficiently attended to the subject to know which it was. Major Elliott's regiment had also been in India; and it was the 76th. Suppose it were the same, and that the two officers were acquainted—and suppose they had met since Vincent's departure from Dunbar House! The young man had occasionally spoken to her of his brother-officers; she remembered Poole, and Wainright, and Carter; the name of Elliott he had certainly not mentioned; but it was naturally of his own friends and companions he spoke, not of the field-officers. Then, when she told him that she had been betrothed by her father, she had not said to whom; but might he not, by some unlucky chance, have found that out? And might not an explanation have ensued!

Could Major Elliott have distinctly discovered the expression of her features, he would have seen that it was something more than perplexity that kept her silent; but the light fell obscurely on the seat they occupied, and he suspected nothing but that she was puzzled and surprised.

'I see you are very curious to learn the secret,' he said, 'and if it were my own, you should not pine in ignorance, I assure you; but as it is a young lady's, I am bound to keep it till she chooses to disclose it herself. However, I hope your curiosity will soon be satisfied, for I have ascertained that Mr and Mrs Wentworth are to be in England almost immediately—they have been some time on the continent—and then we shall come to a general understanding. In the meantime, my dearest Fanny'–

But Frances, unable longer to control her agitation, took advantage of a slight noise in the hall, to say that Mr and Mrs Gaskoin were coming; and before he had time to finish his sentence, she started to her feet, and rushed out of the room.

On the other side of the hall was Mrs Gaskoin's boudoir, where she and her husband were sitting over the fire, awaiting the result of the tête-à-tête in the drawing-room.

'Well?' said they, rising as the door opened and a pale face looked in. 'Is it all settled?'

'Ask me nothing now, I beseech you!' said Frances. 'I'm going to my room; tell Major Elliott I am not well; say I'm agitated—anything you like; but remember, he still thinks me Fanny Gaskoin'–

'But, my dear girl, I cannot permit that deception to be carried any further; it has lasted too long already,' said Mr Gaskoin.

'Only to-night!' said Frances.

'It is not fair to Major Elliott,' urged Mrs Gaskoin.

'Only to-night! only to-night!' reiterated Frances. 'There! he's coming; I hear his step in the hall! Let me out this way!' and so saying, she darted out of a door that led to the backstairs, and disappeared.

'She has refused him!' said Mrs Gaskoin. 'I confess I am amazed.'

But Major Elliott met them with a smiling face. 'What has become of Frances?' said he.

'She rushed in to us in a state of violent agitation, and begged we would tell you that she is not well, and is gone to her room. I'm afraid the result of your interview has not been what we expected.'

'On the contrary,' returned Major Elliott, 'you must both congratulate me on my good-fortune.'

'Silly girl!' said Mr Gaskoin, shaking his friend heartily by the hand. 'I see what it is: she is nervous about a little deception we have been practising on you.'

'A deception!'

'Why, you see, my dear fellow, when I told Frances that you were coming here, she objected to meeting you'–

'Indeed! On what account?'

'You have never suspected anything?' said Mr Gaskoin, scarcely repressing his laughter.

'Suspected anything? No.'

'It has never by chance occurred to you that this bewitching niece of mine is'–

'Is what?'

'Your betrothed lady, for example, Frances Seymour?'

Major Elliott's cheeks and lips turned several shades paler; but the candles were not lighted, and his friends did not remark the change.

'Frances Seymour!' he echoed.

'That is the precise state of the case, I assure you;' and then Mr Gaskoin proceeded to explain how the deception came to be practised. 'I gave into it,' he said, 'though I do not like jests of that sort, because I thought, as my wife did, that you were much more likely to take a fancy to each other, if you did not know who she was, than if you met under all the embarrassment of such an awkward relation.'

During this little discourse, Major Elliott had time to recover from the shock; and being a man of resolute calmness and great self-possession—which qualities, by the way, formed a considerable element in his attractions—the remainder of the evening was passed without any circumstance calculated to awaken the suspicions of his host and hostess, further than that a certain gravity of tone and manner, when they spoke of Frances, led them to apprehend that he was not altogether pleased with the jest that had been practised.

'We ought to have told him the moment we saw that he was pleased with her; but, foolish child, she would not let us,' said Mr Gaskoin to his wife.

'She must make her peace with him to-morrow,' returned the lady; but, alas! when they came down to breakfast on the following morning, Major Elliott was gone, having left a few lines to excuse his sudden departure, which, he said, he had only anticipated by a few hours, as, in any case, he must have left them that afternoon.

By the same morning's post there arrived a letter from Vincent Dunbar, addressed to Miss Seymour. Its contents were as follow:—

'My dearest, dearest Frances—I should have written to you ten days ago to tell you the joyful news—you little guess what—but that I had applied for an extension of leave on urgent private affairs, and expected every hour to get it. But they have refused me, be hanged to them! So I write to you, my darling, to tell you that it's all right—I mean between you and me. I'm not a very good hand at an explanation on paper, my education in the art of composition having been somewhat neglected; but you must know that old Elliott, whom your dad wanted you to marry, is our senior major. Well, when I came down here to meet Poole, as I had promised—his governor keeps hounds, you know; a capital pack, too—I was as dull as ditch-water; I was, I assure you; and whenever there was nothing going on, I used to take out the verses you wrote, and the music you copied for me, to look at; and one day, who should come in but Elliott, who was staying with his governor on the West Cliff, where the old gentleman has taken a house. Well, you know, I told you what a madcap fellow Poole is; and what should he do, but tell Elliott that I was going stark mad for a girl that couldn't have me because her dad had engaged her to somebody else; and then he shewed him the music that was lying on the table with your name on it. So you may guess how Elliott stared, and all the questions he asked me about you, and about our acquaintance and our love-making, and all the rest of it. And, of course, I told him the truth, and shewed him the dear lock of hair you gave me; and the little notes you wrote me the week I ran up to London; for Elliott's an honourable fellow, and I knew it was all right. And it is all right, my darling; for he says he wouldn't stand in the way of our happiness for the world, or marry a woman whose affections were not all his own. And he'll speak to your aunt for us, and get it all settled as soon as she comes back,' &c. &c.

The paper dropped from poor Frances Seymour's hands. She comprehended enough of Major Elliott's character to see that all was over. But for the unfortunate jest they had practised on him, an explanation would necessarily have ensued the moment he mentioned Vincent's name to her; but that unlucky deception had complicated the mischief beyond repair. It was too late now to tell him that she did not love Vincent; he would only think her false or fickle. A woman who could act as she had done, or as she appeared to have done, was no wife for Henry Elliott.